


A Question of Trust

by thedevilchicken



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: Bruises, M/M, Nightmares, Roleplay, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 00:04:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8180893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Bruce doesn't ask for favors. But that doesn't mean there's nothing that he wants.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



Bruce doesn't ask for favors. 

The problem is not that he was brought up in a way that means he can't, where he was told he should never allow himself to be beholden to anyone, never to ask for help when he needs it, never show a second's vulnerability. That's not how his parents raised him and that's certainly nothing he learned from Alfred. 

The problem is not that he feels he can't repay the debt, because Bruce is a man who repays his debts with interest whenever debts arise. He can pay in cash, with the flash of a painfully exclusive credit card, with any of a hundred assets, can pay even when the debt he owes isn't the monetary kind. He's given Dick everything he owes and more besides. And perhaps he can't repay his debt to Jason, but that doesn't mean that he won't try until the day he dies. 

The problem is he finds it difficult to ask for the things he wants. Bruce Wayne can ask for things till the cows come home because that's what's expected; there's the best tables in all the best restaurants, the newest cars, the prettiest women, because that's exactly the man Bruce Wayne needs to be. Batman doesn't ask, on the other hand: he demands, in a voice that's almost as alien as Superman. Most of the time, Batman gets what he wants. 

Bruce, though, the other Bruce, the one maybe ten people in the world even know exists under hand-stitched suits and the smile that's only perfect because his dentist is paid more than most neurosurgeons though part of that's because he keeps breaking his caps in mysterious "accidents", the _other_ Bruce doesn't ask anyone for favors. Maybe he's scared they'll say no. Maybe he's scared they'll say yes. Maybe he's ashamed to admit he wants anything at all. 

Clark's been working on that. 

It's not something Bruce ever wanted. It's not even something he's ever thought he's needed and God knows he didn't ask for it. But once Clark had dragged himself up out of the ground and don't they all feel so damned guilty for putting him in it in the first place, Bruce's place was where he went to. He asked for Bruce's help, looking like he'd been dead for six months and Bruce had assumed - like they all had - that he _had_ been dead for six months. The clothes he was wearing didn't fit well, and Bruce still has no idea how he got there all the way from Smallville when he still couldn't fly because it turned out he could barely walk. He's still not totally sure how he made it to the house past all of his security measures. Clark still says he doesn't know. 

He asked for Bruce's help and Bruce agreed. He took him inside and he stripped him down to his skin and pushed him under the shower first of all and Clark let him, maybe because he knew he still smelled like he'd been buried like a corpse for half a year. He got himself drenched in the process - wetrooms weren't for the fully clothed - and after, in Bruce's room, when he'd pulled out sweats and a t-shirt and gym socks to dress him up like Athletics Ken, Bruce stripped off his own wet shirt to change. He caught a glimpse of the two of them there in the mirror, Clark's perfect skin and his scars in the same pane of glass, and Clark saw too. 

"How...?" he began, like he wasn't sure how to ask. 

"How do you think?" Bruce replied, terse, and pulled on a dry shirt to cover himself up. It was the first time in years that anyone had asked and not expected to hear about crashed Lamborghinis and yachting accidents, even though some of them really were explained away that way. Clark hasn't asked again. 

Alfred liked Clark immediately, and not just because he'd probably saved the world. In the morning, Bruce found the two of them sitting together in the kitchen, deep in conversation over a pot of coffee that didn't have enough left in it for Bruce to get a full cup, so he put on a fresh pot. Clark still looked like hell, waxy and gray and hollow-cheeked like he'd had the life sucked right out of him and it had only come back in in a trickle. It was a sunny day outside and Bruce, the eternal flake because that was expected of Bruce Wayne, blew off his day of meetings and took Clark Kent outside. 

They sat on the deck by the lake, Clark stretched out on his back on a sun lounger Bruce didn't recall ever having bought, and Clark fell asleep there while Bruce sat and watched. He watched the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, the way he shifted every now and then, how the color seemed to come back to his skin in degrees as he lay there, and Bruce wondered to himself about the place that Superman came from. Maybe he had no powers there. Maybe none of his people did. And the frustrating part was he looked so damn human. 

"Does your mother know you're alive?" Bruce asked, later, when Clark woke up as the sun started to fail and they went inside. "Does Lois?"

Clark shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't want them to see me like this. I'll tell them when I'm stronger."

Bruce guessed he understood; whatever grief they felt at Clark's death, it wasn't heightened by not knowing he was back from the dead. Bruce would have wanted the same thing himself. 

Alfred cooked dinner and Clark insisted on helping so they both did, till Alfred shooed them from the kitchen with a mutter of something about too many cooks. Clark said he liked the food but he had to make himself eat it, that much was obvious. Then he went to bed and he slept some more while Bruce went downstairs and then out into Gotham. He wasn't his usual focused self. His houseguest was on his mind. 

When he slept that night, more like the following morning, his houseguest was still on his mind. He dreamed. He dreamed the same dream he'd had before, more than once, the chains and Superman's eyes glowing red, woke up sweating, on edge. And when he went out into the kitchen for breakfast, there was Clark at the breakfast bar, perched on a stool in more of Bruce's clothes, barefoot and drawn.

"Let me make you breakfast," Clark said, since Alfred was nowhere to be found. 

"You don't have to earn your keep, Clark," Bruce replied, and he reached for the poaching pan and for a second he thought they were going to straight-out fight for it but in the end Clark just watched him cook. He cooked for both of them and they ate poached eggs on rye toast with a couple of huge glasses of OJ, perched side by side on kitchen stools, so close their elbows knocked together. It felt wrong. _Clark_ felt wrong. His skin was cold and when Bruce put one hand on Clark's big forearm, they both shivered. 

"You're freezing," Bruce said. 

"I don't feel like it," Clark replied, Bruce's hand still right there. 

"Trust me, you do."

Clark looked at him. Clark looked him in the eye and for a moment there was a knot in Bruce's stomach because he could almost see those human-blue eyes of his turn just as red as burning coals. But Clark nodded instead, like he'd made a decision. 

"I trust you," he said, and smiled faintly, wryly. "Don't worry, Bruce, I know the feeling's not mutual."

Except he must have, or he'd felt dared into it like some kind of utter fool because three days later, he took Clark down into the cave. He didn't explain what they were doing there. He didn't talk the whole time they were down there. He just started his training and Clark hung back and watched until the second day, when he wound a chain around his wrist and tugged and Bruce watched him from the corner of his eye. 

"You've lost _all_ your powers?" Bruce asked. 

Clark's head snapped round at the sound of his voice and he dropped the chain with a clank. "All of them," he replied. 

"Will they come back?"

"I don't know." 

Bruce nodded curtly. And though he dreamed the dream again that night, he took Clark out running in the morning. They started to train. 

It started slowly, because Clark was still weak, and after the run he just watched the things that Bruce did next. A week passed and after that Clark was ready for more; they worked through bodyweight exercises that made Clark sweat and he looked like he'd never even experienced that before. They showered after, down in the cave, and Bruce had never been a prude, he'd never had the luxury of it given how he had to play Bruce Wayne, Playboy, but he couldn't even look in Clark's direction. When Clark cut himself shaving, he looked shocked, got blood on his fingertips and stared at it, pressed his thumb to the cut and hissed at the sting and Bruce knew he'd been telling the truth about his powers because he sure has hell hadn't laced the razor blades with kryptonite. 

He held Clark's chin in his hand and dabbed the cut with an astringent that made him wince like he'd never really felt pain in his life before, standing too close, getting Clark's blood on his hands, too. He looked at Clark. Clark looked at him. 

"Go ahead and analyze it," Clark told him, wry smile slipping into place. "We both know you want to." So he did. 

In the morning, when he'd dreamed the dream again, Clark asked him what he wanted for breakfast and Alfred did nothing at all to hide his amusement, just excused himself since Mr. Kent seemed to have the breakfast situation so well in hand. Bruce scowled and Clark made omelets, then Bruce went out to work and left him there, basking in the sun. 

In the evening, Alfred announced he was going away to spend some time with Dick across in Bludhaven. Bruce didn't gape at him as he took his bag and took the Rolls and left with a faint air of triumph; he looked at Clark and Clark looked at him and the door shut with a bang behind Alfred on his way out. 

"Dinner?" Clark said. Bruce just laughed, his head in his hands. 

He taught Clark the ropes of the computer systems down in the cave and made him wear two sweaters and winter socks since he was planning on camping out in there while Bruce was out. It was like having an audience the whole night, with Clark in his ear the whole time, and then he dreamed about him after, with him sleeping in the bedroom just the other side of the wall, dreamed his fire-red eyes that lit up his face from the inside like heating rocks. When he woke, he was drenched in sweat, exhausted and, fuck it all, he was _hard_. He rubbed his eyes till his vision blurred. He jerked off in the shower thinking about a Russian ballet dancer he'd used to know and not about Clark Kent. He did not think about Superman. 

When they trained, Clark said, "What do you want me to do?"

Bruce didn't know. 

When Bruce left for the day, for the evening, for dinner, Clark said, "What do you want me to do?"

Bruce had not the first idea. 

When Bruce put on the suit - _the_ suit, not _a_ suit - and went out in the car - not _a_ car but _the_ car, when he went out to do the work that was his real work and not just busy work, Clark said, "What do you want me to do?"

There were things Clark could do, but for five nights he didn't ask him for any of them. Then he asked him for directions. Then he asked him for a file. Then he asked him to help him service the car and it was still hard, even that much, when Clark wanted to help him and Bruce didn't want it. 

"You don't like people to help you," Clark said, over breakfast, in the sun so bright it hurt Bruce's eyes but Clark's were still wide open. 

"No, I don't," he replied.

"So what about Alfred?"

"That's different."

"Different how?"

"Alfred knows me." 

"I don't?"

Bruce looked at him sharply, in spite of the sun. "No, Clark," he said. "You don't."

Clark was getting stronger day by day. Soon the fight was almost fair when they sparred down in the cave, and when Clark landed a punch it smarted more than most others ever did. Bruce bruised and in the start so did Clark. Bruce hurt and in the start so did Clark. And then, a week after Alfred had walked out the door, a week of voicemails with Dick chatting in the background that made something in Bruce's chest feel tight, when Clark fell he hovered inches from the floor instead of hitting it. He stood up. They looked at each other. His powers were coming back.

Clark was eager to train but made Bruce ask him to train with him. Clark was eager to talk, but made Bruce say the first word. Clark was eager to help, but he made Bruce say that he needed it. And every night, Bruce dreamed the dream where Clark Kent killed him and woke up sick to his stomach and scared and turned on. He woke up breathless and hard and dug his heels into the mattress as he brought himself off with his hand in fevered fits and starts, his jaw set, his teeth bared. He groaned as he did it, muffled it with the crook of his free arm because he couldn't help it though he could help everything else, every muscle, every reaction, just not where this one thing was concerned. And then the door opened. And then Clark was there. 

"Oh," Clark said, wide-eyed. "Oh God, I'm sorry, I thought you..." He winced. "Oh _God_." 

Bruce looked at him, his cock still in his hand and his heart in his mouth and said, "Do you even believe in God?"

Clark laughed, the sound high and erratic, his fingers in his hair as he looked at him. 

"Does that matter?" he asked. "Do you?"

"Your hearing's back?"

Clark nodded tightly, like he could hear every beat of Bruce's heart, like he could hear the rush of blood inside his veins, and maybe that was all because he could. 

"I'll be quiet in future," Bruce said, and Clark laughed again, that damn near shrill, tight laugh, as he left the room, shaking his head. 

When he came, Bruce wasn't quiet. Knowing Clark could hear him didn't stop him at all.

Clark made him ask for help that night, when he was out in the city at work. He didn't offer. He made him _ask_. Two thugs tried to stab him, he got himself bounced off of the hood of a car, and Clark made him ask for help to get his beat-up armor off. Clark's fingers were warmer then, as they worked under the catches and bent them loose, and Bruce knew, Bruce _knew_ , he could've torn the whole thing off with his bare hands his strength was back to such a damn degree. He wasn't his old all-powerful self, no, he couldn't fly as much as he could hover just above the ground a few seconds at a time, but he was stronger. 

And after, when Bruce was stripped down to the undersuit, so tight it showed every inch of him, every single inch, the look Clark gave him was halfway between disgusted and resolute. 

In the morning, he woke sweaty and hard and jerked himself off knowing Clark was listening. The morning after, he did it imagining Clark in his borrowed bed, listening with his hand around his cock. The morning after, he did it till Clark was there in the doorway and he didn't apologize, he just stood there, watching, somewhere lost between the wide-eyed farmboy and the not-totally-hardnosed journalist and the superpowered alien from another world. He watched Bruce touch himself, lying there flat on his back and naked in bed, hard in his borrowed pyjamas. He watched again the next day, with Bruce leaning back against the headboard, watching him watching him. 

He watched _again_ the next day and then again the next and every day they went on with the day like nothing had happened, except it had, and every time Bruce's arm brushed Clark's or they grappled in the gym or they caught each other's gaze at a moment they didn't expect, there was a shiver of something between them. It made Bruce sick. It turned his stomach. And every time Clark got stronger, every time Clark hurt him and winced and backed off like he was sick himself, that shiver between them got tauter. It pumped him with adrenaline. It made him clench his jaw and clench his fists because he wouldn't ask for it. He couldn't. He _couldn't_ , until suddenly he couldn't do anything else.

"Clark," he said, standing in the cave doorway, standing in his suit. And then he lost his nerve. 

"Clark," he said, standing in the doorway by the car, standing in a suit. Clark looked at him, frowned, and then he lost his nerve.

"Clark," he said, lying in bed in the morning, lying there naked and flushed and hard. Clark looked at him, so Bruce said his name again, heard it catch in his own throat. The part of him that understands how people work understood what Clark's reaction meant; he didn't shy away and that meant he was interested. "Are you going to make me ask?"

A smile flitted across Clark's face. "Yes," he said.

"Please."

"Please what?"

"Touch yourself." 

"Tell me how." 

"You need instructions?"

"No." Clark shook his head. "Tell me anyway."

So he told him what to do. He told him to kneel, right there in the doorway. He told him to push his borrowed pyjamas down over his hips and hitch his borrowed shirt up under his arms and he told him to wrap one hand around his cock and stroke. He told him how fast, how hard, told him when to squeeze and where and how and Clark did it all, sitting there on his heels on the stone floor with his knees spread wide and one hand between his thighs until he gasped and came in fits and starts all over the slab of stone floor there in front of him. 

"Clark," he said that afternoon, down in the cave, and Clark turned to him. Bruce had been watching him, the shift of muscle under skin as he moved, the concentration on his face as he hopped into the air and paused there, but for once his eye hadn't been entirely analytical, hadn't been whys and wherefores and the physics and biology that made what Clark did possible. He'd been watching Clark's broad chest and broad shoulders and slim waist and the sweep of his collarbones. He'd stopped doing what he'd been doing - a set of straightforward pull-ups at the bar - and he'd leaned there instead, hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, watching. 

"What do you want, Bruce?" Clark asked, as he stepped down out of the air. 

"Kiss me," he said, straightforward but half forced, and so Clark did. He stepped forward and he slipped one hand up to the back of Bruce's neck and he tilted his head, his eyes on him, flickering between Bruce's eyes and Bruce's lips. Then he pressed his mouth to Bruce's, wrapped his free arm around Bruce's sweat-damp waist, and they kissed, Bruce leaned against him, Bruce kissed him back, Bruce leaned his whole damn weight against him and Clark didn't shift an inch. When Bruce pulled back, he was already half-hard in his sweats and Clark looked part of the way between self-loathing and turned on and that was where it ended, with Bruce walking away. 

"Clark," he said, that night, standing there in his skin-tight undersuit underground, by the stairs, in the cave. And Clark, in his borrowed jeans that fit pretty well and borrowed t-shirt that was maybe a size too tight on both of them, turned away from the computer and looked at him across the room. 

"What do you want, Bruce?" he asked, as he stepped up out of the chair, Bruce's chair but where he'd let him sit. 

"You're really going to make me ask?"

Clark nodded, his eyes on him. "Yeah," he said. "I'm really going to make you ask." 

Bruce smiled tightly. "Come to bed with me," he said, and so Clark did. He followed him up the stairs and into Bruce's room and when Bruce asked him to undress, that's exactly what he did. When Bruce asked him to help him out of his suit, that's what Clark did. When Bruce went to the bed and asked him to join him, that's what he did. He asked him to lie down there on top of him. He asked him to kiss him, once they were skin on skin, Clark so much warmer then. He asked him to suck him, and so Clark did, his lips pursed around the head of Bruce's cock, his tongue teasing there at the tip, not particularly skilled and Bruce guessed that meant he lacked in practice, but skill didn't seem to matter. He came in Clark's mouth with a buck of his hips against Clark's hands that held him there, immobile. If he'd squeezed harder, Bruce knew Clark could've crushed his pelvis. He was stronger. He was getting stronger still. 

And then, three days later, three days of blow jobs and hand jobs, Bruce's mouth on Clark and Clark's on him, Clark's hands on Bruce and Bruce's hands on him, Clark's eyes began to glow. Bruce felt sick. Bruce felt thrilled. He swallowed. He clenched his jaw. 

"Clark," he said, his stomach knotted up tight, and Clark looked at him with those devil-red eyes. "There's something I want you to do."

That night, Clark put on the suit that Bruce had saved for him, blue and red with that trailing cape that seemed to serve no real purpose but to flap heroically in the breeze. But they were under ground, not a breath of breeze there in the air, and Clark's cape hung down around his legs just the way that Bruce's did. He looked awkward, like the costume didn't fit the way that he remembered it, but then he chained Bruce's wrists with a kind of resolve settling over his face that made Bruce's skin crawl. He didn't trust Clark then, not really, not yet, he knows that, and maybe that was the point of it. Maybe he didn't trust him, just the way Clark had said he didn't, but he found he _wanted_ to. It'd been a long time since he'd had any hope.

Clark pulled Bruce's chained wrists up above his head and fixed him there as Bruce's stomach churned, as his cock stirred. Clark turned away with a swish of red cape and when he turned back, his eyes were redder than it, brighter; his eyes were on fire, his face was molten on the inside with it. When he parted his lips and bared his teeth, Bruce could see the heat of it in his mouth, like he could take a breath and pour out fire if he wanted to. Perhaps he could. Bruce had no way of knowing. 

"Is this what you want?" Clark asked, his voice strained. 

"Yes," Bruce replied, his voice changed by the modulator but he knew his own was strained just like Clark's was. 

"What next?"

"My mask. Pull it off." So Clark did, with one hand, and held it for a second, rubbed his thumbs over the lines that lay over Bruce's cheekbones, and then he tossed it aside. 

"What next?"

"I don't know. In the dream, you kill me."

"I'm not about to kill you." 

"I'm not asking you to." 

"Then what next?"

Bruce frowned. Bruce scowled. "Hit me," he said. So Clark hit him, open-handed, straight across the face. "Harder." He did it again, harder, hard enough to sting. "Jesus Christ, Clark, _harder_." He did it again, his fist connecting hard with Bruce's jaw and he saw stars, he reeled, he knew a bruise would spread and he didn't care a single bit. "Put your hands around my throat." So Clark did, loosely, but when Bruce glared he tightened them a fraction, made it harder to breathe, and Bruce pulled on the chain around his wrists over his gauntlets, thinking of all the things he'd've done to escape if his captor hadn't been Superman in his shiny blue suit. His legs were free so he'd've kicked him, gotten his thighs around the guy's neck and squeezed till he passed out, or snapped his neck if the situation turned truly desperate. But his captor was Superman, just like in his dream. 

Clark's hands were hot, like he was heated from inside, like the glow in his eyes radiated through his body and almost scorched Bruce's skin. He gasped in a breath, looking Clark eye to flame-red eye, and he rattled his chains and he gave a token struggle but Clark didn't let him go. 

"What next?" he said, too close, close enough the heat from his eyes made Bruce's skin flush hot. 

Bruce rasped in an unsteady breath, hard in his suit, and maybe he should've been ashamed but he didn't have much time for shame. 

"Fuck me," he said, his voice strained and harsh and rasping. The light in Clark's eyes faltered for a second. His grip loosened for a second. And then he nodded tightly. 

The fire in Clark's eyes bit through the alloys and resins of Bruce's suit like a laser, like a cutting torch, hot, painful, burning his skin in its wake. Clark moved, and those laser beams moved with him, sliced in until he tucked in his fingers underneath and yanked whole sections out from abdomen to thigh. His fingers went through the undersuit and tore it, pulled it away, left it tattered, left Bruce bare in part, left his skin exposed, and Clark's fingers traced the burned lines, made him hiss in a breath though the marks would be gone in a few days, nothing serious though they could've been. 

Clark trailed the tip of one finger up over the underside of Bruce's erection, then he stepped around behind him. He trailed that finger down the last few inches of Bruce's spine exposed by the missing sections of his suit, down to the dimple by the crack of his ass. Clark moved and Bruce heard him do it, Clark parted Bruce's cheeks and he ran the pad of one thumb down between them, rubbed at the muscle there, pushed against it, tested the resistance. Bruce wondered if he'd done this before. Bruce wondered if aliens like Superman _could_ do this, at least with humans. And then there was heat against his skin and breath against his skin and a nearly too-hot tongue against his skin and Bruce groaned out loud, the sound echoing off of the walls and the thick glass panels. He hadn't asked for that. That was just what Clark had decided to do.

Then Clark stood. He went up to his feet and there was a fabric sound, odd, quick, before what had to be Clark's cock rested hot against the small of Bruce's back. Clark rubbed it down lower, rubbed the tip of it between Bruce's cheeks, right up against him, more promise than suggestion. Clark slicked his cock with some kind of oil from Bruce's discarded belt and then he pushed up against him. He wrapped his free arm around Bruce's waist to keep him there in place, and he pushed up against him. He pushed up _into_ him, bit by bit, the length of Clark inching in opening him up, filling him up, making his breath catch in his throat. 

They fucked. Maybe it was a first for Clark and his homespun farmboy morals or maybe it wasn't but that didn't matter either way; Clark fucked him slow and hard, almost too hard, hands at Bruce's hips to keep him from moving and that _was_ too hard, enough to bruise, and he remembers the shape of those bruises, how they smarted for a week after they were done and all Clark could do was look at him like the sorriest guy in the world because he'd hurt him, even though Bruce had wanted it, and he told him so. They fucked, and Clark's hand went around Bruce's cock and he jerked him as he moved in him till he came over Clark's hand and the floor and what was left of his tattered, half-demolished batsuit. Then Clark came in him, hot, nearly too hot, waves of it that made Bruce groan out loud. 

Clark let him down. And once Bruce had stripped out of what was left of his suit, Clark looked at him. Clark winced, but he didn't say he was sorry.

Alfred came home two days later and two days after that, Bruce and Clark took a trip out to Smallville. Martha Kent was overjoyed and the next day, in Metropolis, Lois Lane slapped Clark straight across the face the way that would've hurt if he'd been human. She and Clark are friends now, but things were tense between them for months, nearly a year. 

Clark moved back to Metropolis. He went back to his old job. He went back to his _other_ job, his other work, when he was strong enough to do it, and Bruce watched his exploits in the papers while he worked on his own city. But every morning, 6am, Superman walks in through Bruce's bedroom door, just like he did twelve seconds ago.

These days, Bruce trusts him with his life the way he couldn't've done back then. These days, when Clark comes in, Bruce finds it easier to say the things he wants. He finds it easier to pick up the phone and call and catch Clark at the office while Bruce is in his and tell him all the things he wants him to do. He knows Clark blushes just like humans do at some of his more lurid suggestions. On the other hand, he knows Clark doesn't mind.

"Clark," Bruce says, though these days Clark doesn't always make him say the words.

"What do you want, Bruce?" Clark asks, in his blue suit and red cape there in his doorway. 

And though there's a hundred things he could say, what he says is, "It's your turn to choose."

Bruce doesn't ask for favors. He finds it hard, admitting there are things he wants in life that aren't a brand in the shape of a bat or less violent crime on the books around Gotham, though Clark's worked on that over the past two years it's been now since Clark came back from the dead. 

Bruce doesn't ask for favors, and he's not the only one. Clark doesn't, either, and so Bruce is working on that now. Turnabout is fair play. And maybe, in the end, it won't feel like tearing out his heart to ask Clark to tie him up, won't feel like defeat when he asks him to hit him, when he asks him to hurt him, when he asks him to show him just how strong he can be, how alien he is in such a human form. He trusts him now, he's not scared of him, not really, but the glow like magma in Clark's blue-red eyes still turns him on and terrifies him all at once. 

But today they undress and they go outside and they do it there on their knees on the deck in the morning sun, Bruce's chest to Clark's back as he moves in him because, today, that's what Clark wants. He wants slow and deep and close in the chill of morning air and Bruce is as happy to oblige as when the request's for kryptonite and a struggle, Bruce's fists bruising his skin, Bruce's thumbs over his trachea until he finds it hard to breathe. Bruce could kill him then, he thinks, and keep him dead if he just boxed him in lead and kept him underground. Maybe one day he'll need to.

And maybe, sometime, someday, asking for what he wants will be easy. For now, all he can say is Clark has made it easier.


End file.
